Use of Technology for Autism Students

Technology Use In Classroom For Autism Students

Abstract

Teaching students with autism spectrum disorder is a challenge for teachers. The problem arises when the needs of students with autism are not being met by the teachers through the use of traditional teaching and instruction methods. The study holds significance because it sheds light on the improvement methods through, the technology could help in teaching students with autism in a better way. Technology can be one of the most effective tools for resource rooms in schools. Learning disabilities like autism, which has an effect on the written expression, can be easily overcome with the help of technological gadgetries if introduced.

The targeted population for the research includes teachers of special students classroom. There will be 10 teachers who have at least 5 years of experience for teaching students with a special education. The permission has also been obtained from the respective Institutional Review Board from the respective school. The researchers will then collect data from the Riyadh city schoolteachers. The analysis process that is taken by a survey in the Institute of such kids illustrates that they are going to handle all type of situations in terms of learning these techniques as well as making those techniques gets implemented in their lives because they are going to face the world in near future. As this situation will come into their lives at a time.

So they should be prepared well, to learn that skills accurately and efficiently as well as with the best outcome aspects as a must. Autism kids are the part of our world they must not be ignored at any stage so they should make an important and compulsory part of the nation or the state in which they are going to live with other people. Autism kids are also a part of our nation and if they do not teach properly with the techniques to tackle the world then they only are able to face the world properly and efficiently as an essential part of the society.

Introduction

Autism is a disorder, which may affect the communication problem (both verbal and nonverbal). Interactive smart boards can be used to minimize its effect in the classrooms as it includes the impact on the interactive manipulation of individuals and another kind of learning augmentations, which could be of some help for the students with autism, and to improve their performance in the classroom (Guang Jin, 2010). Important quality education is an important factor in the conventional practices of teaching that has been followed for many years. For that purpose, Black Boards were used on the traditional basis and then they changed into whiteboards with the change in teaching style. Education institutions are the base for development and prosperity of the country. Countries spending more in educational sector have transformed into better and developed nation as compared with the others spending less.

Problem Statement

Teaching students with autism spectrum disorder is a challenge for teachers. The problem arises when the needs of students with autism are not being met by the teachers through the use of traditional teaching and instruction methods. For that purpose, the incorporation of technology into the classroom to teach students with autism has become an important initiative to be taken in the classroom.

Research Question

What is the role of technology in the classroom for students with autism?

Research Hypothesis And Null-Hypothesis

Research Hypothesis: Technology provided effective teaching results when teaching students with autism spectrum disorder.

Null Hypothesis: Technology did not provide effective teaching results when teaching students with autism spectrum disorder.

Definitions

1. Autism: A spectrum disorder, which includes a range of conditions that are characterized using challenges, which are found with repetitive behaviours and issues with non-verbal and verbal speech.
2. Technology: Collection of skills, methods, techniques and processes, which are used to accomplish objectives using scientific investigations.
3. Smart Board: Learning boards run through technology for team efficiency and learning proficiency.

Assumptions

This research has the major assumptions that people are well aware of the Autism disorder and the challenges, which students with ASD might face in their learning. This research also pre-assumes that teachers currently are not making use of technology in the classroom setting to teach students with autism.

Limitations

The study has limitations as it only relies on the primary and secondary sources to support the evidence. The sample size used for the project is also small which might make it hard or impossible to generalize the results for the larger population.

The Significance Of The Study

The study holds significance because it sheds light on the improvement methods through, the technology could help in teaching students with autism in the better way. This could also help in providing students with the interactive use of technologies which can enhance their learning capabilities that are otherwise compromised because of autism disorder. This study has great significance about the educational awareness for teachers because it presents various technology advancement tools that could help the teachers in increasing awareness about the effective use of technology and to effectively make the learning process of disabled students effective and efficient.

Literature Review

There is a concept of resource rooms, separately constructed, in schools of developed countries. The aim of the rooms is to provide specialized instructions and academic remediation to students having educational disabilities, mainly the learning disabilities. Common special needs like learning disabilities, communication disabilities (David Miller, 2012), emotional and behavioural disorders, physical disabilities, and developmental disabilities are to be addressed in these resource rooms. Students with these kinds of special needs are likely to be treated with special approaches (Kuo Wen-jin, 2012).

Overcoming learning disabilities is a lengthy process and takes time as “introduction of assistive technology in the resource rooms helps students to overcome learning disabilities and compensate them for specific learning disabilities. Support with the help of assistive learning can be found very helpful for the students to become independent in schools and throughout life” (David Miller, 2012).

“Technological change in the classrooms will assist in the understanding of the students and will also help them in attaining a good academic level. School is also likely to maintain good academic level with the addition of these gadgetries” (Suwondo, 2012). In some of the schools, the technology has already taken place like for example the Bigger School Districts like Columbus City Schools, Olentangy Local Schools are already using the technology in their resource rooms, and as a result, their students are performing much better as compared with other students (Efthymios, 2009).

SMART Airliner wireless tabs use could help the student to relate using smart boards through their respective table and won’t need to walk to the board on their own. This board will help students having limitation in interactions. Smart whiteboards are the best solution for these students and proved as useful in the special room for the schools with a low budget. Colourful transcripts and pictures can ease students to clutch keep notions. By integrating interactive phonics will be help for these students in recitation the symbol using the sound of phonics. Smart response system could be useful in giving tests by the students in some areas which the teachers are weak in the students (Kuo, 2012). Since the boards are endorsed in the resource rooms for children with disabilities, then the teacher may high methods which can be frolicked for better comprehension of the students.

Population And Sample

The targeted population for the research includes teachers of special students classroom. There will be 10 teachers who have at least 5 years of experience for teaching students with a special education. The sample size will include 10 teachers who will be given the respective questionnaire to be filled. The teachers are from the special classrooms where the particular focus will be made on students with autism disorder. The teachers will be accessed by sending them questionnaire via email to be filled. They will be made well aware of the purpose of the study and will be told that the study will be conducted to learn about the issues that they face within the classroom for not making use of technology in the classroom and in learning about their perspective towards technology in the classroom.

Saudi teachers have been selected for the research study which will be of age older than 25 years. The participants also need to be the users of at least one of the technology platforms which include iPads, Smartboards or Visual Instruments. The participants will also be given full form of confidentiality that there will be no risk involved in the research study and their personal information will be held confidential before and after the study. To respect the level of participants’ confidentiality, IDs will be allocated to the participants so that their names are not disclosed within the study. The participation from the participants will also be completely based on a voluntary basis. No participant will be forced to take part in the study without their own consent. The results will also be kept completely confidential and will not be disclosed to the third party. These teachers will be from the Saudi Arabia schools in Riyadh City only.

Instrumentation

The participants will be asked to fill out the written survey which will contain questions about the use of classroom technology for students with autism. The individuals will also be asked about their demographic information, which includes information about educational level, age, and marital status and the technology in the classroom that they have been using. Before the actual questionnaire, they will also be asked about the favourite technology along with its reason that they have been using in a classroom of special students. The survey includes two of the major areas which include autism disorder and technology use in the classroom. In the respective current study, the only technology related questions were used. The technology used in the classroom also includes questions which consist of 36 phrases which describe beliefs of the participants and their attitude.

The Likert scale will be used to answer the question that will range from 1-5. 5 correspond to strongly agree, 4 to agree, 3 so I don’t know, 2 to disagree and 1 to strongly disagree. The Arabic survey was then translated into English where the translation accuracy was then confirmed by the professors to make sure that the right transition is made between Arabic and English languages.

Procedure

The survey will be held and email will be used as a medium to send the questionnaire. Teachers will be given one week to find the time and fill in the survey. This will be aimed to find out the attitude of teachers about technology to teach students with autism. Data analysis will be carried out through the analysis of results of responses gained from the teachers after filling the form. This will be made sure that the teachers have completely filled the form. The personal information of teachers will be held confidential. The pilot test will be carried out on the data collected from the survey.

The permission has also been obtained from the respective Institutional Review Board from the respective school. The researchers will then collect data from the Riyadh city school teachers. The survey was also done in order to have the meeting of the Saudi teachers’ organization with permissions from the organization. The researcher will also explain the subjects to the participants and also the respective purpose of the research and what they would be doing. The participants will be asked to answer 5-question survey about the respective idea of technology use in the classroom which was described in the study. The participants will also answer 5 questions survey about the technology used in the classroom and the first survey will include pre-test measure. After hearing the lecture, the participants also need to ask the answers for the technology link with autism disorder survey for the second time and then given coded describer.

Validity And Reliability

            The instrumentations for the research have been used from the respective previous research. The determination of reliability and scale also needs to be done as this research is based on the pilot study where the sample includes 10 participants. All of these participants are teachers of age above 25 years. The same researcher will also investigate the consistency of items by the respective computation of correlation that is formed between each of the items and the total score of the scale will be calculated. The validity of the scale includes the computation of correlation between each item and the respective total score of the scale.

All the items within the respected acceptable correlations with the total score which range from .235 to .625. The respective pattern of correlations indicated that the scale items as it has been homogenous i.e. all have the same construct and meaning. The result is also seen to be evidence of construct validity.

Data Analysis

Results

1. Do you think technology has some key role in performing improvements in learning of students with autism?
   1. Yes
   2. No

Interpretation

The first question was asked by the teachers is that the technology they are using is playing the important role in the learning’s methods development of Autism kids. The majority says yes around seven people and only three people say no they think that technology is not making improvements in learning developments of Autism kids.

2. Technology paving ways for the further development of students in the end with special needs?
3. Strongly agree
4. Agree
5. Neutral
6. Disagree
7. Strongly disagree

Interpretation

The next question ask was the use of technology in the class for the development of minds of people is important or not? Four teachers strongly agree with this statement, two simply agreed, two disagreed with this, one strongly agreed with this and one teacher remains neutral in answering this question.

3. Smart boards and other interactive mediums are important for the overall development of students with autism.
4. Strongly agree
5. Agree
6. Neutral
7. Disagree
8. Strongly disagree

Interpretation

Another question asked by the teachers is that whether the use of smart bonds and the use of other interactive medium are important in their learning or not? One teacher disagreed with this question, one teacher strongly disagrees with the question. He was against the question it is observed by its answer. Four people remain neutral that they whether not agree with the question nor disagree with this. Two people agreed to this question and two people as well agreed with the situation that the use of these mediums is very important in this institute.

4. Teachers also have barriers while making a right use of technology in classrooms for students with autism.
5. Yes
6. No

Interpretation

The next question, which was asked by the teachers, is that whether they have any kind of barrier in terms of making a right use of technology in the classroom that is essential and as well as very important to use to educate the kids. The ratio was equal half said yes and half said no.

5. Lack of training for making use of technology in the classroom by teachers has become a major obstacle in the right use of technology for students with autism.
6. Yes
7. No

Interpretation

This question was asked by 10 teachers who deal with the kids of having autism as they have to deal with different and unique situations at the time of educating those children. The question was that they have a major issue with the use of technology that they need in order to teach the children of Autism. Around six teachers say yes that they have the technology, which is enough but others four teachers say that they have not sufficient technologies that they use to teach Autism affected children.

Analysis

The data that is gathered from the teachers is very much effective in terms of concluding that whether the use of technology is increasing the learning of the Autism kids. Autism is a disease, which makes the children too much shy and disturbed as well as it, makes the child lose its confidence in terms of communicating with other people. Autism is considered a disorder because it makes the children far away from the people to get interact with them in order to play, to talk to participate in the conversation etc. Autism kids are very much disturbed and as well as they find difficulty in having a conversation with the people in order to work on the issues and talk to the people about the topic they wanted to talk about.

When we talk about the data that we have gathered in terms of the questions that we have asked from the ten teachers about the analysis on the technology used by the teachers in the centers of that children so that technology is a making the effect on the development of the learning of the kids. Answer questions describe a mutual situation that some of the teachers are agreed with the term that the use of technology is efficient in our department. Technology that is implemented in the institutions related to making the Autism kids convenient in the interaction of people. The technology is about to make the kids more convenient in their interaction with the people so that they can share their views with other people as well.

Some technologies are used that makes the use of their learning tools easy as well as they make the kids enables of implementing and making new techniques in terms of using and making new ideas in order to make their learning skills efficiently and as well as precise according to the needs and wants of the Autism kids.  The autism kids have the unique identity that they use to stay a part of the people in each of the time when they meet people especially new people if they know some of the people then they do not hesitate to meet with and interact with them because they are going to know them from their institute as their teachers or instructors.

Autism kids are only be treated effectively when we use technology resources in learning them the new and innovative techniques because it can be made efficient and as well as cornices to them that they should interact with normal people in order to make them normal as well. The use of technology in using to teach the autism kids are not efficient in the eyes of some of the teachers that refuse to accept this development they think that this issue is not a piece of cake. They suggest some ways that the new technology should be introduced in the Institute of teaching Autism kids that makes them more efficient and more confident to get contact with the real world people.

They say that new technologies like having new machinery, which teaches them how to recognize the person’s nature, should be introduced. It is the foremost task of our institution to make kids aware of the bad and good people this should be taught them first. The other kinds of machinery, which must be included in the institute, are to learn the difference of languages of different people. We live in a place where different people have different languages according to the state where they live. So they should be able to learn the new as of the communicating with different languages people by introducing new technology machinery that makes the learning of new languages with the proper accent that they should learn in order to interact with them properly and efficiently as well. This analysis is good as well as very much improving in the field of learning and educating the Autism kids in their special schools.

Conclusion

In the nutshell of the analysis done in order to implement the technological issue in learning the Autism kids we can say that these kids education is a very sensitive and efficient manner as well as it leads to the development of their skills that they can easily put in terms of interacting with the new people because they are going to make like normal people in terms of making the learning of the techniques. The new technologies are very much advance as well as they are very much efficient in terms of making them approved and implemented properly in the sense of making them learn the new techniques.

The new techniques are implemented and introduced to the schools of Autism kids because the main goal is to make that children get mixed with the people in the real world as this stage is much important if it came into the life and this stage should come in their life because at any time they have to interact with the people they know or sometimes with the people they do not know about them. Such situations can only be tackled by Autism kids only then when they are taught properly according to the new techniques because they are going to tackle the people in the real world.

Recommendations

There are many of the new technologies that must be introduced in such education department because all the study can only be done after the use of latest technology. As the latest technology is when implemented in such institutes the will increase their efficiency as well as they are to be introduced to all the Autism kids because they have to use it and learn the efficient and enough ways in it. The Autism kids are very sensitive kids they must be handled very much keenly and carefully, as they should not be treated with a harsh tone. The new technology that must be introduced for that kids like they must be introduced by the use of that machines that make them aware of the use to know the nature and behaviour of the people because there are different people with different minds in this world.

Some are negative minded people that uses to take the wrong use of the special people in terms of making them baggers such situations must be avoided so in order to make them learn about the good and bad things and as well as with the use of the technology to know about the exact behavior of them with Autism kids. The new technology has introduced in order to make them learn new skills of understanding of different languages in order to understand their conversations. Such kids are not easy to tackle them easily with the positive and précised results in terms of making the learning of the new things and technologies so that they can interact with new people properly as well as learn to talk and communicate with them accurately and with precision as well as with best results in terms of having confidence to talk to normal people.

Also Study:

Effective Learning Strategies in a Digital World

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